


The Secret Under His Bed

by justanothersong



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, Destiel Ficlet Challenge, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Secret Admirer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-01
Updated: 2014-08-01
Packaged: 2018-02-11 07:03:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2058537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justanothersong/pseuds/justanothersong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: <i>"Person A and Person B have been best friends for a long time bordering on being in love, however there is one big secret Person A has never shared. What is it?"</i></p><p>Dean’s mother, Mary, is the one that told them the story, time and again. A sunny day at the playground down the street, with three year old Dean tunneling his way through a sandbox with a handful of matchbox cars, and Castiel sitting in the grass a few feet away, pulling up dandelions and stuffing them into the front pocket of his overalls. She never did see them connect, but wasn’t too surprised to see Dean toddling over with a grin on his face, arm slung over the shoulder of the smaller dark-haired boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Secret Under His Bed

“Man, this is gonna be so weird,” Dean mused aloud. They had stopped really working on anything a good half hour before, and were both just sitting on the floor of Castiel’s old bedroom, surrounded by twenty-odd years of memories that neither was truly ready to let go. Castiel had nicked a couple beers from the fridge, and they were both half finished with their bottle, watching the sun begin its descent outside of the single window in the small room.

Looking out into the early evening, Dean let out a sigh. Directly across from Castiel’s window was a window in the house next door, the room that had been Dean’s bedroom for a good eighteen years. He used it as an office now, having moved into the master after his parents decided to become snowbirds and spend the fall and winter months in Florida, driving back to spend spring summers staying in Sam and Sarah’s spare room. Dean had taken over the old family homestead, and didn’t fault them for choosing his brother’s home for the warm months in Kansas; he knew they wanted to be closer to their first grandchild, who was going to make his way into the world in a month’s time.

“Dean, I haven’t lived here for more than ten years,” Castiel pointed out with a short laugh. Much like Dean had remained in his family home, Castiel’s sister Anna had taken on the old Milton house not long after she married. Her spontaneous decision that she needed a sewing room had brought Castiel home from his apartment across town, to go through everything he had left behind and decide what could be tossed, and what needed to be saved. Of course he had recruited Dean for the job; the two had been best friends longer than either could remember.

 

Dean’s mother, Mary, is the one that told them the story, time and again. A sunny day at the playground down the street, with three year old Dean tunneling his way through a sandbox with a handful of matchbox cars, and Castiel sitting in the grass a few feet away, pulling up dandelions and stuffing them into the front pocket of his overalls. She never did see them connect, but wasn’t too surprised to see Dean toddling over with a grin on his face, arm slung over the shoulder of the smaller dark-haired boy.

They were opposites, even then. Young Dean had been big for his age, looking more like a first grader than an overgrown toddler, taller and broader than the other boy, with sandy blonde hair and big green eyes. Castiel was the same age but small and thin, a mess of dark hair and wide inquisitive blue eyes; he carried that same frame all the way through their junior high years, when he began running track and filling out, gaining several inches in height in a few short months. When all was said and done, Dean was still just a mite taller, but his mother always saw them that way, two little boys on a playground, dandelions sprouting from their fists and sand on their knees. 

It was only on the walk home that the boys’ mother had realized that they were neighbors; Castiel’s family had moved in only a week prior, and Mary had been waiting to let them get settled before introducing herself. She was never really sure if it was the proximity that made the boys so close, or something else entirely; after all, they had held hands in their side-by-side strollers the whole way home that first day. Either way, they became fast friends and in all the years together, nothing ever really came between them.

 

Dean glanced at the window again and shook his head, seated on the floor and leaned against Castiel’s old desk.  
“Still, it’s weird,” he protested. “I mean, I still see your old posters and shit when I look out my office window, man. It was almost like… well, like you were still here.”

Castiel, seated across from Dean, back against his old bed, glanced up at the wall and snorted. Caught in the last rays of sun drifting in through the window were his old Hackers movie poster and Kansas City Royals themed calendar still stuck on July of 1997. He was surprised there wasn’t any more dust than they had labored through already, but Anna was always a bit of a clean freak and probably still came in to dust.

She happened by the door just then, popping her head into the room and frowning down at her younger brother and his friend. The room was even messier than it had been before they arrived.

“I could always hire one of those companies to come in and just haul everything out, you know,” she said.

“We’ll get it done tonight, Anna, promise,” Castiel replied with a laugh. Too much time spent traipsing down memory lane had derailed their plans of a quick and easy clean up job; all Castiel could remember wanting from his old room were some books and his letterman jacket, but each opened drawer or box from the closet had unearthed new treasures he had forgotten all about. It was fair to say they had gotten distracted.

His older sister rolled her eyes and blew a stray strand of her red hair out of her eyes.  
“I’ll set a couple extra places at dinner,” she said with a sigh, taking her leave back down the hallway.

When she was gone the two men looked at each other and immediately started laughing; how many times had they heard that same tone from her over the years, the same roll of her eyes? Now in their mid-thirties, it seemed almost hysterical. They shared another laugh and apparently the same thought, as both began digging into Castiel’s mess.

 

Piles of old clothing were tucked into plastic bags to be sent to charity; they were old enough to have become stylish again, and Castiel knew some teenager would be thrilled to find his old Starter jacket or Pearl Jam t-shirt tucked onto the rack at some thrift store. 

There was trash as well, sneakers too worn to be useful to anyone, floppy disks carrying old homework assignments that Castiel had insisted on saving, though neither owned a computer that could access them now. The Speedo from his brief stint on the school swim team became a slingshot that sailed back and forth a few moments, amid their laughter, until Anna’s knocking on the kitchen ceiling with a broom handle reminded them of what they were supposed to be doing. 

When Castiel attempted to toss out an old sketchbook, Dean was quick to snatch it from his hand.

“What? Man, no way! You can’t just throw this out!” he said, appalled at the thought. Flipping through the pages, he found a myriad of pencil sketches, from angels to Castiel’s mother, to potted flowers and even Dean himself, seemingly asleep. Running a finger across perfectly placed pencil freckles, Dean shook his head. “I can’t believe you gave this up, anyway.”

Castiel shrugged, uncomfortable. “Wasn’t something I could really keep up with, once we hit college… then work… just no time. Besides, I could only ever do it with my left hand, you know?”

“Well I’m keepin’ it,” Dean announced with his usual cavalier grin. “Maybe remind you to start picking up a pencil again, huh? Even with your left hand.” He had always found that funny; Castiel was right handed in everything he did, except for his drawings. The other man somehow could only sketch properly with his left.

Castiel shrugged but seemed please, adorably awkward for a man in this mid-thirties. Some things, Dean mused to himself, never changed.

 

There were books, of course; battered paperbacks, books of half-finished math puzzles, crosswords, even old text books that Castiel thought might come in useful. It seemed each item carried another memory, another moment from their shared past to make them smile. Dean was still hooting over where Meg Masters had scrawled her phone number in Castiel’s sophomore Algebra book when he noticed a shoebox tucked beneath Castiel’s old bed and reached to pull it out.

“Hey, what’s this?” Dean asked curiously. So far as he knew, Castiel had never owned a pair of Air Jordans in his life, and yet here was a cast off box from the expensive sneakers Dean himself had just had to have during their freshman year.

Dean was too focused on the box in his hands to notice the sudden panicked expression that graced his old friend’s features, and missed entirely the slight tremor in his voice when he called out, “Wait! Dean, don’t…”

Dean opened the box, the surprise on his face evident as he surveyed the contents. A slight smile graced his features as he ran his fingers through the mess of papers inside.

“Damn. Man, I haven’t seen these in years,” he muttered, more to himself than to Castiel, and plucked one faded slip of paper from the pile, smiling down at the scribbled message and running his thumb over the yellowed piece of scotch tape that had once held a heart-shaped lollipop.

 

It had started during the seventh grade. Just a few weeks into the new semester, and Dean’s junior high reputation had been shot all to hell.

It hadn’t been his fault, not really. He liked Jamie well enough, the doe-eyed blonde who stood just a little taller than him; her parents owned a bar and let them sit there in a booth after school to do their homework together, serving them sodas in the same frosty glasses they served their customers beer, and they’d sneak off to make out, sloppy wet seventh grade kisses, in the broom closet behind the bar. It had been fun, for a while.

But Jamie was different than other girls he had gone with. She was bolder, more experienced. And when she pushed, passed the boundaries Dean hadn’t realized he even had, he had to back away. It was too much. He wasn’t there yet, he wasn’t ready. He was embarrassed as hell, and Jamie was furious.

By the time he got to school that Monday, the story of what happened had changed; suddenly Dean had been the aggressor, slipping a hand up Jamie’s uniform skirt. It was a small school, with the girls banding together and word spreading fast, leaving Dean on the receiving end of a cold shoulder from just about everyone. Not a girl in the school would give him the time of day, and the boys were too afraid they’d get the same treatment if they even talked to him – all but Cas, of course.

To make matters worse, Valentine’s Day was approached and the school had set up a fundraiser, allowing students to send each other silly little heart-shaped lollipops to be delivered throughout the day. In homeroom that morning, Dean had sat sullen and embarrassed, not having received a single card; even Castiel had received one from Daphne Allen, blushing bright red as a sixth grade messenger delivered it to his desk.

Dean was considering cutting school entirely by third period, when the same sixth grader who had delivered Castiel’s valentine that morning arrived with an armload.

“I don’t know what you did,” the redhead told him, eyebrows raised, “But I’d keep it up if I were you.”

“Th-thanks Charlie,” Dean replied, suddenly blushing as the girl flounced off, leaving him with a baker’s dozen red heart lollipops on his desk, attached to slips of paper praising everything from his eyes to his ability on the baseball field. 

The cold shoulder from the junior high girls was suddenly over, with even eighth graders glancing his way, and Dean counted it as the best day of his life – until the following year, when the school ran the same fundraiser and Dean went home with enough candy to give him cavities for the next year and a half. They had all been written in the same hand as the first set – which of course he had saved, sentimental kid that he was even if no one else realized – and he knew it was the same person.

 

It happened again in high school – parochial schools and their constant fundraisers – when Dean was delivered rosebuds throughout his day during his freshman year. It earned him a little bit of a reputation as a lothario but that was never a bad thing when you were fourteen and trying to get by as a freshman. 

He started talking to Castiel about it then – about his mysterious secret admirer. Dean knew it had to be someone who had gone to St. Celestine’s with them in junior high, and moved on to the same high school, but that in itself wasn’t much of a surprise. Practically their entire graduating class had moved on to the same high school, after all. Still, it was fun to think about.

Someone liked him. Really liked him.

The notes with the roses had said wonderful things, and his very favorite, Dean kept tucked into his wallet: ‘I am a better person for having known you’, it said. It drove him wild, that someone could ever think so highly of him.

“At least I know it’s not Jamie,” he told Castiel with a laugh over their lunch table. “Probably not Andrea either. Or Lisa.”

Castiel snorted. “You could probably figure it out just by crossing all the girls who are pissed at you off your list,” he offered, and Dean threw a straw wrapper at him.

 

The notes came more frequently after that, sometimes slipped through the slats on his locker door, or even tucked into his bookbag. One had been in his US Government textbook, of all places. A couple even arrived in his family’s mailbox over the summer.

They seemed to arrive whenever he needed them most, making them seem all the more special.

Some were so personal, he didn’t even share them with Castiel.

 

_“When I’m having a bad day, all I have to do is see you smile, and it gets better.”_

_“You’re too hard on yourself. I wish I could show you how amazing you are.”_

_“Sometimes I think about running away, but I don’t think I could stand leaving you.”_

_“I think I might love you.”_

 

They both stayed at home when they started college. They lived in Lawrence, in decent driving distance of the university, and saving money was important to both of them. Castiel’s father had died while they were still in high school and his mother, though a strong and determined woman, struggled with six children and a mortgage. Castiel had gotten a scholarship and student loans to cover the remainder, a part time job to help out; Dean had done the same.

The Winchester family had always struggled just a little. Dean’s father’s mechanic salary didn’t cover all of their bills, and even with the bookkeeping their mother did part time, it could be difficult, especially with Sammy outgrowing his clothes every other week. Dean worked and went to school, saving money by staying home and helping out where he could.

It was during their freshman year when Dean posed the question that had been on his mind a while.  
“D’ya think you could, like… love somebody you never met?” he asked one day, the two of them laying on the hood of Dean’s beloved Impala. His father had given him the car the day he graduated high school, tears in his eyes as he said he wished he could give him something better; Dean had replied that it was all he ever wanted.

Castiel snorted. “Not another chat room hookup, is it Dean?” he asked, staring up at the Midwestern night skies.

Dean rolled his eyes. Sure, he had made some bad decisions in that department. Lydia had seemed awesome, when they met in a horror movie chat room. He definitely had rethought that initial assessment, after she went all Glenn Close on him.

“No, not that,” he replied, elbowing Castiel. “I mean, like… it’s been years, right? Same person, sending me notes. Letters. Hell, I’d have written back by now, if I knew where to send it… whoever it is, man. They seem to really get me.”

Castiel had gone quiet, and hadn’t responded. Dean just let the conversation go.

 

Midway through their sophomore year in college, Dean got the letter that would change everything. It had appeared in his mailbox overnight, and by then Dean knew the awkwardly sloping handwriting on sight. He gasped aloud at the message inside: _Meet me at Willow Grove park on Valentine’s Day, five o’clock_.

He knew that park, just down the street from where his family lived. He was excited and terrified at the prospect, but he knew in his heart that he was ready. It was time to meet his secret admirer, finally, after all these years.

He didn’t tell anyone; he didn’t want to be embarrassed if it went badly. He didn’t even tell Castiel, a rare thing for him to keep anything from the other boy, who shared so much of his life already.

But Valentine’s day came and went, with Dean left sitting alone on a swingset, waiting. He checked and re-checked the note; perhaps he had gotten the time wrong, or the date? But the betraying words in the note kept saying the same thing, over and over again. Valentine’s Day. Five o’clock. Willow Grove Park.

Dean didn’t speak much to anyone for a few days after it happened, and didn’t even tell Castiel what had transpired for months after. He felt foolish and betrayed; how could this person who had said such beautiful things to him, after all these years, let him down?

Years passed and he tried to let it go, but it kept bothering him with each passing Valentine’s Day. Why would someone do that, keep it up for so long, if it was only meant to be a prank? How could anyone be that cruel?

Dean had thought he would meet the one. He had thought he’d found his soulmate.

 

The dejection came back then, running his fingers through the old notes and letters. He had saved them all so carefully, storing them away in the back of his closet where no one could find them, taking care to hide them even better than the few issues of old Playboys he had stashed away beneath his mattress. The shoebox and its hidden quarry had meant everything to him, until that last note’s promise went unfulfilled.

Dean suddenly frowned. It didn’t make sense. Why would Castiel even have these? Dean certainly hadn’t shared them with him – he hadn’t even told his friend that he had kept them. In fact, Dean suddenly remembered with cold clarity the cold March night when he had stomped them out to the trash can, stuffing them beneath the lid to be taken away with the morning trash.

His gaze snapped back to Castiel, who suddenly looked terrified. For a thirty-and-some-odd-years old man, he suddenly looked so young and vulnerable, eyes wide and swiftly filling with unshed tears, hands held up before him as though he were ready to stop Dean from some rampage.

Mouth open, still not understanding, Dean glanced back down at the box in his hands and spotted a folded sheet of blue paper he hadn’t noticed before. The notes had always come on plain copy paper or paper valentines, never blue. Castiel seemed to spot it all at once, and reached to take it, but Dean plucked it from the rest before he could, quickly unfolding the sheet of paper that hadn’t been opened in more than a decade.

“I’m sorry,” the note read. “I was afraid. I didn’t mean to hurt you, I just chickened out. Please give me another chance. Please.”

“I never got this one,” Dean said quietly, eyes still on the paper.

Eyes closed, hands clasped in his lap, Castiel nodded. “You were so upset,” he responded with a shaky voice. “I was afraid to send it.”

“You got these… out of the trash?” Dean asked slowly, turnings towards Castiel, who still sat with his eyes closed.

“I couldn’t… I saw you throw them out, I couldn’t… I didn’t know what it was when I saw you but the way you were hiding it, I knew…” Castiel babbled. “I’m sorry Dean. Please. Please don’t hate me. Please.”

Dean let out a short laugh that held no humor at all. “Your left hand,” he said, shaking his head, hand creeping to the back of his neck in a stressed gesture that Castiel knew all too well. “You wrote them with your left hand, so I wouldn’t know it was you.”

“Dean, please,” Castiel sputtered, shaking his head. His face had gone red with embarrassment and shame, his voice desperate. “It was a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Can’t we just—”

“Forget about it?” Dean offered incredulously. The blue note was still grasped tight in his hand. “Jesus Christ, Cas, don’t you even realize? This… this stuff,” he said, reaching in to grab another wad of the papers with his free hand, “This got me through some of the worst shit, stuff I didn’t even think I could talk to you about, man. Why… I just don’t get why you would do this and not even…” 

He frowned, the words sticking in his throat. He’d never told anyone about this, his secret fantasies about his secret admirer. Sometimes, in his daydreams, it was whoever he was crushing on at that particular moment. Girls from school. Castiel’s sister, Anna. Ex-girlfriends. Even crazy ideas, like the handsome gym teacher they’d had in eighth grade, a man just out of college with a brilliant smile. And then, more and more often as he got older, the mysterious writer behind all of the little love notes he had received, in his most secret fantasies, had become his best friend.

But he had been so certain then that it was all a silly daydream. That he would have known if it were Cas, that he and Cas were family, brothers almost. That it couldn’t be. That he should feel stupid and ashamed for even thinking, for even hoping. But daydreams were as easy to control as the clouds in the sky, they came and went of their own volition, oftentimes leaving Dean red-faced and embarrassed of his own imagination.

 

Dean swallowed hard. “I waited,” he finally spoke, after a long moment of tense silence. “Even after I threw’em all away. Even after it had been months. Years. I waited. Thinking, maybe they’d change their mind. Maybe they’d just show up outside of one of my classes, or at the counter at work, and tell me. Maybe I’d get a letter explaining it. Hell, I thought… it’s stupid, so stupid, but even when I was getting married, man, I thought whoever had written these,” he said, brandishing the letters again as he spoke, “Might show up. Y’know, voice from the back of the church or something.”

Castiel frowned. “Why didn’t you say?” he asked in a shaky voice. “I thought you told me everything.

Dean snorted. “I thought you did the same,” he replied, then sighed. “I think that’s even what made me call it off. The wedding, I mean. Me and Cassie, we’d never work out if in the back of my mind, I was waiting. Waiting for you, I guess.”

Castiel let out a bitter laugh, scrubbing his hand over his face at Dean’s words, the flippant way he’d tacked on those last few. Waiting for Cas, indeed. What a disaster it would have been, it seemed, if he had showed up at the park that day. They wouldn’t even be friends anymore, if that’s even what they still were.

The wide-eyed look from Dean made him realize that he’d spoken the words aloud, and before he even had a chance to take them back, the other man was up on his knees, near crawling over to wear Castiel sat.

“Do you think that?” he asked incredulously, taking Castiel’s hands in his face. “Christ, Cas, do you really think…?” Dean stared down into frightened blue eyes, shaking his head. “Seventh grade, maybe? Yeah, I’d have been freaked out. Eight maybe, too. But by high school… man, you had to know. How could you not know? All the times I’d convince you to sleep in my bed, ‘stead of on the floor when you slept over. All the times I made a move on you when we were watching movies on the couch… Christ, Cas, how could you not know?”

Castiel frowned; he squinted, tilting his head to the side. “‘Made a move’ on me?” he asked.

Dean laughed again, a bit hysterical now, pressing their foreheads together. “Cas, guys don’t throw arms around each other watchin’ Tarantino movies alone in the basement. Guys don’t… don’t lay all on top of each other in a bed during sleepovers.” He sighed, shaking his head even where they remained pressed to close together. There was a smile in his eyes now, if not on his face. “Cas, guys who are just friends don’t get drunk and make out at a frat party.”

Castiel began to mirror Dean’s wide-eyed look from moments before. “Do you… do you hate me, Dean? For what I did?” His heart was pounding in his chest; Dean had wanted him, once. Dean had made every overture towards him, but he had been too afraid, too wrapped up in his own thoughts that he’d never be good enough for the green-eyed boy next door, that he had never even realized, even when he professed his own feelings in secret love letters.

Dean’s laughter was louder this time, happier, as though it were bubbling right out of his chest. He pressed a sudden kiss to Castiel’s forehead and then dropped his lips closer, speaking right against the dark-haired man’s lips.

“I could never hate you, Cas. No matter what you did. No matter how long you kept me waiting,” he confessed with a sigh, mouth brushing Castiel’s surprised parted lips as he spoke. 

“Waiting?” Castiel asked, almost choking on the word.

“Done waitin’ now,” Dean responded quickly.

 

Castiel had been kissed before, though not often as he would have liked, or by whom. There had been women and men he thought perhaps could fill the Dean-shaped hole in his heart over the years, but there always had been that comparison lurking just below the surface; they didn’t know him as well, they didn’t make him feel as happy or at ease. In the end he had thought he would just have to live with it, suffer a life on his own rather than subject anyone else to a relationship that could never be complete, when someone else owned so much of him.

Kissing Dean was better than anything he had ever experienced; there was no comparison, not to ice cream or cotton candy, to vacations on the coast, to winning lottery tickets, to energetic sex with enthusiastic partners. He would give it all up, take back every kiss he’d ever given, all of it, to just have this again.

Dean’s lips were soft and warm, just like he’d always imagined. He kissed like Castiel was something delicate and priceless, something to be worshipped. His thumbs ran in gentle circles against Castiel’s stubbled cheeks, gentle pressure to tilt Castiel’s lips just where he wanted them, with Castiel following eagerly. Small breathless pauses where Dean nibbled at his skin left Castiel shivering, kissing back harder and letting his hands grip into Dean’s sweat t-shirt.

For his part, Dean felt alight and alive like he hadn’t in years. It was like getting that first perfect valentine all over again, only this time he knew the sender and knew he was safe and loved. Castiel tasted like fruit salad he had eaten for lunch, pineapple and watermelon and sweet strawberries mixed with something perfect, something uniquely Castiel that Dean knew he had already become addicted to.

“Is this real?” Castiel asked, gruff voice dropped to barely a whisper. He felt like a teenager again, all shaky and fearful and exhilarated. He had waited so long, wished for this.

Dean shivered at the sound of his voice. “If you want it to be,” he replied, and was leaning in for another kiss when Anna’s voice interrupted them for the doorway.

“Oh for god’s sake, really?” she asked, arms full of a load of freshly laundered towels she had been bringing up to the linen closet. “Thirty years and you two finally have your great sexual awakening when I’m trying to get you to clean out this wreck? You two are a disaster, I swear. The spaghetti’s done, get your asses down to the dinner table and please try not to make out over the garlic bread.”

 

Some weeks later, Dean found himself staring out his home office window when he was supposed to be checking his email. He could still see Castiel’s room, though the walls had been painted a soft lilac and the old posters were gone. It almost left him a little melancholy, if not for the warm hand that suddenly rest on his shoulder.

He looked up into bright blue eyes and smiled. “Heya Cas,” he said quietly.

Castiel leaned down and dropped a kiss to the top of Dean’s head. “Hello, Dean,” he replied.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on [Tumblr](http://literatec.tumblr.com), if you wish.
> 
> Please do not add this, or any of my posted works, to Goodreads. Thank you.


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